Chapter 16 - The ApartmentThe lease was finally ending.
Marcus had kept our old apartment after the divorce because I didn’t want to fight over it.
He remained there eighteen months longer than I expected.
Then he moved.
A box arrived at Vantage addressed to me.
Inside were photographs.
Books.
My grandmother’s silver serving spoon.
A sweater I thought I had lost.
And a key.
Marcus included a note.
There are still a few things in the storage closet. I don’t know what you want. The landlord needs the place empty Friday.
I considered sending an assistant.
Then decided no.
Some doors should be closed personally.
The apartment looked smaller than I remembered.
Same windows.
Same kitchen.
Different furniture.
Marcus was packing the last boxes.
For a moment, I saw our marriage everywhere.
The kitchen table where I rewrote his proposal.
The wall where we hung our wedding photograph.
The corner where I sat reading the email ending our marriage while Aunt Margaret slept under hospice medication eight hundred miles away.
“Hi,” Marcus said.
“Hi.”
No Celeste.
No board.
No chandeliers.
Just two people in an empty apartment.
We opened the storage closet.
My boxes were still there.
Consulting files.
Old photographs.
A framed certificate.
I laughed.
“What?”
“My master’s diploma.”
“You didn’t know it was here?”
“I thought it disappeared in the move.”
Marcus looked ashamed.
“I packed your office after you left for Seattle.”
“I remember.”
Then he found a yellow legal pad.
My handwriting covered the pages.
Marcus stared.
“What?”
He held it up.
His first Vantage proposal.
Draft notes.
My notes.
He sat on the floor.
“I built my whole career from this.”
“No.”
He looked at me.
“You built the first step from it.”
“That’s not nothing.”
“No.”
I sat opposite him.
“For years, I wanted you to admit it.”
“I know.”
“Then eventually I didn’t.”
“I know that too.”
He ran his thumb over the paper.
“I’m sorry I made your contribution invisible.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m sorry I cheated.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m sorry I ended the marriage by email.”
“That one was especially cowardly.”
He laughed sadly.
“Yes.”
Then:
“Are you happy?”
I thought.
“Mostly.”
“Anyone?”
Meaning relationship.
“No.”
He nodded.
“Me neither.”
No invitation followed.
That mattered.
We were not exes drifting romantically back together because both had changed.
Some relationships are healed by rebuilding.
Others by finally ending without poison.
We carried my boxes downstairs.
At the door, Marcus looked around the apartment one last time.
“I thought keeping this place meant I won.”
“What changed?”
“I realized I was living in a museum of a version of myself I didn’t even like.”
I smiled.
Aunt Margaret would have appreciated that.
Outside, I put the boxes into my car.
Marcus handed me the key.
“Goodbye, Rebecca.”
Not forever.
Just to the marriage.
“Goodbye, Marcus.”
May you like
And this time, neither of us needed someone else to lose.
Keep reading—because Rebecca’s future finally begins when she stops measuring it against the life she once had.
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